Nearly 3,000 delegates gathered in Beijing's Great Hall of the People to vote on Mr Li's appointment, putting the final stamp of approval on a generational transition of power.

The 57-year-old drew only three no votes and six abstentions from the carefully selected parliament.

Mr Li rose and shook hands with Xi Jinping, who was elected president by the legislature on Thursday.

While Mr Xi is the country's top leader, Mr Li heads China's State Council, or cabinet, and is charged with executing government policy and overseeing the world's second largest economy.

As Premier, Mr Li will oversee a sprawling portfolio of domestic and economic affairs, although real decision-making takes place in the top committee of the Communist Party, on which he also sits.

Mr Li, who has a degree in law and a doctorate in economics, will take the reins of an economy whose growth slowed in 2012 to a 13-year low, albeit at a 7.8 per cent rate that is the envy of other major economies.

Analysts have described the Wen years as a lost decade during which economic reforms slowed and state-backed industries tightened their grip on the economy.

Both Mr Xi and Mr Li will need to deliver a blueprint to stabilise the real estate market.

They need to do this quickly to calm a market in which real estate prices have soared 10-fold in major cities during the last decade.

Zhou Qiang, a former Communist party secretary of Hunan province, was named president of China's Supreme Court.

It's a fundamental human yearning to be a part of something bigger than one's self, and maybe that's what drove my mate Ash to die, far from home, in a bloody foreign war against Islamic State, writes C August Elliott.